Clay Buchholz is the Red Sox's opening day starter, but can he be the staff ace the club so desperately seeks in order to climb out from the AL East cellar? Definitely, according to Curt Schilling. But that's not the issue.

The former Red Sox ace says he just doesn't think Buchholz has the mettle to be the current No. 1.

"Well, I don't think he wants to be one," Schilling told reporters Wednesday, via the Boston Herald. "I think there's a level of commitment mentally and physically you have to have. You have to have a little bit of a dark side, I think, in the sense that losing has to hurt so bad that you do whatever you can do to make sure it never happens again. Clay is just kind of, 'Hey, I'm going to pitch today.'"

Buchholz has shown flashes of ace potential in his career. He posted Cy Young-worthy numbers in 2013 when he was baseball's best pitcher for the first half of the season before a nagging back injury ended his year after 16 starts. When he returned last season, the right-hander looked nothing like his 2013 self, posting a 5.23 ERA and 1.386 WHIP over 170 1/3 innings.

With Jon Lester in Boston, the Red Sox are devoid a go-to workhorse at the top of what should be an otherwise strong rotation, so they're looking to Buchholz to seize those reins. But he has his fair share of doubters, and Schilling apparently counts among the ranks.

Bucholtz, 30, seems to have recaptured some of his velocity this spring, consistently hitting 94 mph on the radar guns. He says he's feeling completely different from where he was a year ago. Whether or not it's 2013 different is the real question, though.

"It's night and day for me," Buchholz told reporters Tuesday after tossing four shutout innings against the Twins. He has a 2.89 ERA in 19 innings this spring.

"I was talking to John (Farrell) after I came out," he continued. "Right now, whenever I feel like I need to reach back and get a little extra, it's not in a max-effort level where I'm not staying within the delivery. That just goes to the work that I put in with the delivery this offseason and early this camp, all the bullpens and stuff."